But with rising costs and dwindling margins breathing down the neck, does quality take a backseat during slowdowns? "We believe in exactly the opposite where we try and improve our quality during recession. In the last 50 years, Steelcast has seen about 4-5 business cycles. During growth time, we have increased our capacities and production tonnages by 15 percent to 20 per cent YOY. During this time, our quality has suffered as the pressure is to produce more tonnages," Tamboli says. In fact, Tamboli believes that it is only during recession where his company gets time to focus and improve quality.
"In order to effectively focus on quality issues, we have identified major areas for improvement. We have created multiple task forces to deal with each of the problem areas." These task forces meet on daily basis to review progress and decide on further actions to be taken. These task forces involved Quality Assurance team members as well as production team members. "To cite recent example of improvement in quality in last 12 months, we have reduced our hot tear defect rate on the casting by over 90 percent by means of improved foundry practices," Tamboli adds.
Patidar believes quality is not coincidence and not governed by external market dynamics, but a strong focus and commitment on products' marketability which is primarily dictated by its quality. "Our current stature and quality has been earned over the years with meticulous approach and huge investments. Thus we would never want to compromise it due to factors like recession. On the contrary, we believe in the need to be more quality conscious and should learn to work on low margin during recession," he explains.
Ghosh agrees with both Patidar and Tamboli by saying quality remains same for all time and all products. "Recessions are lean periods with ample resources, which offer opportunities to set right our house. Cleaning and other 5S related activities, training, etc. engage everyone to further improve working conditions and quality as a result of the same. Imparting training to employees is the main concentration of Disa during recession period in enhancing knowledge," he says.
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